|
|
I woke up with what felt like a toadstool farmer's glove in my mouth, drank two cups of coffee and went through the morning newspapers. I didn't find any reference to Mr Merton Vale in any of them. The cops must be sitting on this one. Suits me. I did have a few contacts in the more salacious and less reputable elements of the newspaper business, and I could put in a call if I wanted the focus taken off me for a time. Besides, it would really piss off Miss Tight-Ass Luncardy. But not now. The sensible thing was to walk away. I had been paid, in advance, a very tidy sum, then I had been warned off in no uncertain fashion. I didn't even have a client who was in a position to moan about my lack of progress any more. The right decision, the obvious course of action, was to chalk this one up to experience and leave well alone. I couldn't do it. Instead, I thought I could find out a little more, answer questions that piqued my own pride and my curiosity - although the latter is something which I knew had proverbially killed the cat. Besides, there was something else I hadn't told the cops, something that had only occurred to me on wakening, hangover or no hangover. Vale's burgundy briefcase was missing, the one with the elaborate and indecently expensive magical protections he had carried with him on his first visit to my office. It wasn't with him when I found his body. Sure, it might have been taken away by whoever it was who had poisoned the whisky - my whisky - assuming that it wasn't the simple suicide it superficially resembled. It might even stolen by some chancing passer-by. There were plenty of light-fingered layabouts in that low-rent office building, although they would have had to be particularly brave, or skilled, or just foolhardy to tackle that kind of anti-theft magic. The briefcase must have been important - no-one spends a fortune on active protection otherwise. Sure, he might have left it at home, under the no-doubt watchful eye of his wife. But on his first visit, he gave the impression that this was something that never left his sight, and in any case a short call on Mrs Vale would clear up that possibility. But I doubted it. His wife was probably somewhat suspicious and would regard an impenetrably locked case as deeply upsetting, a reaction that would almost certainly result in the kind of incessant nagging someone long-married would strive to avoid. More likely, Vale would have stashed his case somewhere else, left it with a trusted partner. But who? It wouldn't be his business partners; they would be at each others throats with daggers drawn, or at least in a permanent state of armed neutrality. The trouble was, he might have trusted Clunie - who probably thought herself trustworthy but who was a naive child in the ways of the world. So, today’s order of events: a visit to the Widow Vale, then back to the Starfield Club.
|
Part 11